ScreenCapture - screenshot of component, figure or screen

ScreenCapture gets a screen-capture image of any Matlab GUI handle, or specified screen area rectangle

ScreenCapture gets a screen-capture of any Matlab GUI handle (including desktop, figure, axes, image, or uicontrol), or a specified area rectangle located relative to the specified handle.

Screen area capture is possible by specifying the root (desktop) handle (=0).

The output can be either to an image file or to a Matlab matrix (useful for displaying via imshow() or for further processing), or to the system clipboard.

This utility also enables adding a toolbar button for easy interactive screen-capture.

Syntax:

imageData = screencapture(handle, position, target, 'PropName',PropValue, ...)

Input Parameters:

handle - optional handle to be used for screen-capture origin. If empty/unsupplied then current figure (gcf) will be used.

position - optional position array in pixels: [x,y,width,height].

If empty or non-specified then the handle's position vector will be used.

If both handle and position are empty or non-specified then the position will be retrieved via interactive mouse-selection.

If handle is an image, then position is in data (not pixel) units, so the captured region remains the same after figure/axes resize (like imcrop)

target - optional filename for storing the screen-capture, or the 'clipboard'/'printer' string.

If empty or non-specified then no output to file will be done.

The file format will be determined from its extension (JPG/PNG/...).

Supported formats are those supported by the imwrite function.

If neither target nor imageData were specified, the user will be asked to interactively specify the output file.

'PropName',PropValue -

optional list of property pairs e.g., screencapture('target','sc.png','pos',[10,20,30,40],'handle',gca)

PropNames may be abbreviated and are case-insensitive.

PropNames may also be given in whichever order.

Supported PropNames are:

- 'handle' (default: gcf handle)

- 'position' (default: gcf position array)

- 'target' (default: '')

- 'toolbar' (figure handle; default: gcf) this adds a screen-capture button to the figure's toolbar. If this parameter is specified, then no screen-capture will take place and the returned imageData will be [].

Output parameters:

imageData - image data in a format acceptable by the imshow function. If neither filename nor imageData were specified, the user will be asked to interactively specify the output file.

Usage examples:

imageData = screencapture;  % interactively select screen-capture rectangle
imageData = screencapture(hListbox);  % capture image of a uicontrol
imageData = screencapture(0);         % capture image of entire screen
imageData = screencapture(0,  [20,30,40,50]);  % select a small desktop region
imageData = screencapture(gcf,[20,30,40,50]);  % select a small figure region
imageData = screencapture(gca,[10,20,30,40]);  % select a small axes region
   imshow(imageData);  % display the captured image in a matlab figure
   imwrite(imageData,'myImage.png');  % save the captured image to file
screencapture(gcf,[],'myFigure.jpg');  % capture the entire figure into file
screencapture(gcf,[],'clipboard');     % capture the entire figure into clipboard
screencapture(gcf,[],'printer');       % print the entire figure
screencapture('handle',gcf, 'target','myFigure.jpg');  % same as previous, save to file
screencapture('handle',gcf, 'target','clipboard');  % same as previous, copy to system clipboard
screencapture('handle',gcf, 'target','printer');      % same as previous, send to printer
screencapture('toolbar',gcf);  % adds a screen-capture button to gcf's toolbar
screencapture('toolbar',[], 'target','sc.bmp'); % same with default output filename

Technical description:

https://UndocumentedMatlab.com/articles/screencapture-utility

Bugs and suggestions:

Please send to Yair Altman (altmany at gmail dot com)